No One Owns the Rain
by R Amythest
Summary: Tellius, 625. Slavery lives on in Begnion. The laguz continue to suffer. The Goddesses sleep through the pleas of two more.
1. Part I

This was originally supposed to be a 8000-word one-shot. We know how those turn out. This has three parts to it. The two others are already written and will be posted within a few days of each other.

I don't like breaking up the end of a story with my babble, so I'm just going to say right up here: I love attent- uhh, reviews. Yeah.

* * *

**No One Owns the Rain**

(I)

* * *

Marel perceived – both eyes kept sharp unlike Nirvan, who lost an eye for the gaze that had wandered about the Duke's pubescent daughter – the dimness of her hair in her reflection upon the meticulously washed marble wall. White-gray stone with black veins, polished to show herself and the garden in sharp clarity. The green of her eyes flashed bright against her dusty face, and she watched her tongue tease a parched lip. A splash, and her reflection vanished in the movements of her rag, although the wall could not improve beyond its current state.

Less water for the slaves in the midst of drought, so it was said. Mysteriously, there was enough to clean the walls beyond spotlessness, carried by slaves from the river six miles away, allocated to the Duke's cleanliness. When the humans turned to immerse themselves in petty gossip, Marel wrung the rag into her mouth. It tasted like stale dirt and charcoal but its welcome wetness made it sweet. She noticed a shadow shift and looked upward. Nirvan's single eye peered down at her before turning away, seeing nothing. She didn't need to respond to express their bond.

Nirvan, she assumed, was chimney-sweeping this afternoon. Normally a job reserved for cat-tribe children – Marel herself was spared the duty by being just too large at capture – Nirvan made the tight squeeze for Mistress Fiela's chimney on account of her weak lungs, which allegedly could not tolerate the presence of fur. Bitterly glaring at the reflection of a moist and healthy hyacinth, Marel thought to herself that the Mistress enjoyed the slave-tended gardens enough.

From the start, as was legend, Mistress Fiela had always rained trouble upon them like a heavy storm cloud. The birth of perhaps no other mortal had demanded so much blood in retribution. The loss of the Duchess demanded the death of all the midwives; the illness of the infant brought the miracle doctor's "cleansing of the household"; the survival of the child brought misery to an already beaten people. When Marel quietly asked Nirvan how he could fall for such an accursed human, he replied in his stoic murmur, "It was not my gaze that wandered." Marel hissed at his rashness, but the innocence of his worker's hands made her realize her mistake with his words. So it was that a grown hawk once accused of indecency toward the Mistress lived, and further was assigned to clean her chimney weekly, even in the summer.

With a trembling scrub, Marel realized that she could barely contain her rage. Dry heat seeped into her skin and robbed her head of water until a headache throbbed strong against her eyes. She remembered when life was not this contradictory street-corner spectacle of meaningless motions and sounds. Even Nirvan, he needed words. He came the closest to the truest dance of life, to the existence of spirits dancing together, doing only what was real, knowing meaning without the confusion of words. She was a child when she was stolen from these ways, but some things, she felt, needed no time to become wisdom. They were meant to know these things by the pulse of their laguz blood.

She glanced down the wall to marvel at the strong bodies arranged in submissive acts of weeding and cleaning. Where had their blood gone? It seemed that all of it had been sucked from them by the dry, lifeless air of the manse.

Marel stole a second gulp of water, and with that she was caught and lashed.

* * *

"You should not test them," Nirvan murmured. "It is very hot." She hated the proper high Begnion accent in his voice. He hadn't the slightest hint of wildness in his words or his mannerisms – perfectly tamed.

"Why I am thirsty," Marel grated with tired agitation. She lay on the dirt floor of the slaves' cabin, wishing she could nurse the wounds placed cunningly on her upper back.

Covered with dust that could not conceal his thirst, Nirvan gazed at her with one steely gray eye. "You should not test them," he repeated, before showing her the waterskin he stole himself. With a cry of delight and need, Marel reached for the leather container. Even the slosh of moving liquid that met her ears sounded wet. In the dimness, several dozen jealous eyes turned their way. "One small drink, lioness." The young cat did her best to meet the description of a small drink and consoled herself with a single mouthful. "There is no more water in River Saepe."

"Which, Saepe?"

Nirvan cupped his hands as if holding water like a deep river basin. All rivers within a day's travel had run dry. She had overheard from one of the Duke's cartographers that soon, only Lake Semper would stay wet.

"Is judgment," she said, closing her eyes away form Nirvan.

"We are the dying."

"Humans need more. We find. Survive." He said nothing with his irritating voice. She sensed that he was humoring her. "Almost night."

"I will leave you be." He took the waterskin from her impassively, rose, turned mechanically to leave.

"Human lover."

Nirvan turned to appraise her quietly, indignation echoing deeply in the shadows of his face. Aware of the dozens of others in the room, he said only, "Good night." The door clacked shut with the latch, and Marel smiled to herself. That look was her favorite part of him. If only he would show it to anyone else.

Nirvan once was, and still appeared to many others to be, an extension of the humans who enslaved them. His perfect mannerisms and utter, genuine humility marked him as the same as that opposing race. She wanted to rip out his wings at the time; he didn't deserve to bear them. Every morning he came to shepherd them to the carriage in the back to unload barrels of wine. Every morning he watched over them like a human. The raven in Nirvan's old post – she didn't know his name but remembered him as The Rooster in her head – possessed none of the redeeming qualities she eventually found in Nirvan. The Rooster was a traitor through and through. So were the other false-laguz watchers. They were all happy pets in their human clothing and human mannerisms. Nirvan was different. That was why he fell.

* * *

There was no wine for them to move the next morning. The Rooster informed them all that the shipment was attacked by thirsty bandits and that they would be assigned elsewhere. "The doctor is short on his draughts," he said (or more fittingly, cawed) with his creaky old voice. "Master needs one to visit the apothecary."

Mistress Fiela had taken ill again. The Duke never remarried and doted most thoroughly over his only child, an all but continual anxiety with her fragile health. At one point they sent for the doctor weekly, but the Duke quickly realized that a doctor must remain in residence to watch her at all times. Now the trips were monthly to restock on his various curatives.

None looked eager to volunteer for the task of walking to the nearest unfriendly town in the heat. The Rooster picked one, and the middle-aged tiger obligingly left. With that, they were dismissed to their barracks.

Marel felt faint between the heat and thirst as she walked back to the cabin. The term "barracks" was used loosely in regards to the places where they slept. The structures were all old but strong, walls and roof of stone, with nothing on the inside but space and dirt ground. As she entered, her eyes adjusted slowly to the dimness. She rested in her space by the wall, leaning back until the sandstorm in her vision passed.

When her senses recovered, she saw that all the others had drawn their attention to the back of the room. Marel followed their gaze and saw a dark-eyed hawk standing upon a makeshift podium of a stool with uneven legs. For a moment, she thought she saw Nirvan – they had similar build and coloration – but the moment he moved she dispelled that notion. Nirvan was polite, unassuming. This hawk was bold. A leader.

"We will rise, or we will die," he was saying in a magnificent baritone, as loud as he dared. Marel felt his words seize her focus. In another life he could have been a magnificent orator. In this one he was known as a gardener. "The Duke has enough water for us all. This water was carried on the backs of our brothers." Roars of appreciation, half-swallowed with fear and disuse, mumbled throughout the cabin. "The Duke has enough food for our stomachs, enough medicine for our sick. But we have let him have too much of each one of us! He cannot own us!"

Marel would have cheered if she were the cheering sort, yet was surprised by the silence to this. The hawk frowned upon them all and said, in a most stately voice, "We belong to the legacy of our ancestors. We were born as the children of the earth. The sky belongs to us – the dirt belongs to us – we own the rain, and it will fall when the Goddess blesses _our_ kingdom!" The crowd stirred at the mention of rain. Murmurs rose to swallow the intended climax of, "We will be free!" Whispered disapproval swallowed the words to be lost within the crowd. But those words wormed their way to the back of the room, where Marel murmured back, "We will be free."

She remembered word of the last revolt from two years past. All the slaves of Begnion had rose to join it. In her mind, she imagined waves upon waves of laguz, swelling in ranks that continued beyond sight. Their power was so uncontrolled that at its conclusion after nearly a year of struggle, it moved the Empress to act – or at least speak. Like a consolatory offering she promised freedom they never obtained. "We will tear Misaha from her throne!" the hawk called, barely controlling the urge to shout in his momentum. "We will finish what our brothers bravely begun."

And, finally, the speaker asked, "Who will join?"

Who? Who answered? None. Marel waited vainly for another to say _I will_. A dubious, noncommittal murmur ran through the meeting hall. In disbelief, she herself stayed silent.

"We have enough strength between all of us," the hawk angrily addressed. "It need not be used for the benefit of others."

A tiger in the front row rose and gave a snarl at the speaker. _You will not tempt the young ones_. Marel understood by instinct, and a stir among the others of the beast tribes showed that they understood as well.

The hawk did not understand. "Yes! You have your anger. Use that anger!"

Impatient with the silent and timid masses, Marel pushed herself to her feet and stood. Within seconds, every head in the crowd had turned to her. Her eyes flickering from disengaged faces to the hawk, she said in modern tongue so the speaker would understand, "We was not born to live this way."

_These acts have always failed, _the tiger growled.

With palms up in an exalted fashion, the hawk descended from his makeshift podium to approach Marel. As he strode amongst the sullen and dispirited, he raised his eyebrows toward Marel with an air of faint conspiracy. He extended his palms to Marel. She looked down at them awkwardly, wondering what he expected of her. Hesitantly, she ventured to lay her hands on his. Clasping her hands tight, he said quietly – but as if more loudly than he had rallied them – "They will never have our pride." She liked to think that the whole room heard.

Marel traced his light side-to-side movement as he transferred his weight from one foot to another. He pressed his dried lips together and she saw his tongue dart to wet them with spit, despite knowing that would only make them drier. His dark eyes searched her face, and Marel's own green eyes followed their movements with momentary distrust. But soon this stranger was done searching her, and he turned back toward those gathered. "No one else?" He gestured toward Marel and the protesting tiger, still mistaken. "You would so easily give up what it means to be laguz?"

_They have already given up_, Marel intuited briefly. She quickly stifled it alongside all of her doubts. And then, a lone laguz rose from the far sight of the room. For a moment, she was surprised as all throughout the room, young laguz, faces full of desperate hope, rose in succession. Then even reason overpowered her inhibitions.

"We will succeed, or we will die." The hawk lowered Marel's hands and slowly paced back toward his podium. "And we will not die. Not here. The Goddess wouldn't allow it."

* * *

The plan spread through the barracks within two days. On the day of rebellion, Daienese roasted deer rib would be served. Their kitchen-worm would poison the meat that no slave would touch and the wine that no slave would drink. After the humans had eaten their fill, the sweeping-boys would knock over every vase in sight as the alarm. Then they would take their buckets and fire pokers, their brooms and their kitchen knives, all the instruments of their submission. With these they would beat down what remained of the guards and they would be free.

By the third day, her head whirred and throbbed with dryness. The night before, she and Nirvan had finished the last of his water. The scarcity had begun to affect even the nobles. A fine layer of dry dust collected outside the mansion walls. The Duke's beloved flowers were allowed to wilt. The region had gone as yellow and barren as late fall. She heard that a pair of human servant girls had been flogged that morning for drinking from the warm bath they had prepared for the Duke. They were permitted to drink the murky, soapy water afterward.

The middle-aged tiger, with a face worn like an elder's, approached Marel in the evening, before Nirvan's typical visit. _This is foolishness, sister_, he growled to her as respectfully as he could. _Do not throw your life away_.

_Better thrown away than thrown at their feet_, she hissed back.

He seized her with arms empowered by a lifetime of servitude. _It has been tried before. It will only be our loss to bear._

_Complacency!_ She pulled away from him as best as she could. _You, you are still in chains. You have been too weak all your life to try._

Stricken, he quickly withdrew. Only when she saw his retreating back did Marel realize the sting of her sentiment. She guiltily prowled away to rest in another part of the room.

Sure as the sun, Nirvan came to their barracks shortly after. He communicated to her with a flicker of his gaze and a roll of his shoulders that he had heard of the plans. The sun was rapidly setting beyond the horizontal slits in the slaves' chambers that passed for windows. Slaves were never spared something as precious as candles, and Marel knew that she would have to send him back to his own cabin before darkness came to blind his hawk tribe vision.

She could see his cues in the near-dark, but she knew that he could not see hers. She touched the tip of one bound wing and gave a brief purrlike growl, like a mother calling for her naked kittens to feed. He shifted his wings away. For an instant she felt sorrow, but it vanished as he knelt closer to her and laid his blackened hands on her shoulders. He gave a small murmur that meant nothing in language, yet was full of concern and uncertainty when it fell upon her ears.

She ran her gaze, still perfect in the dimness, over his sooty brown hair, his worry-worn face, his labor-worn body. Marel had the thought that Nirvan should have been born a storyteller, with his perfect acting, pleasing voice, and sensitivity to spirit. Nirvan was born a slave. His mother and father tried to find something in each other amidst the chains upon them, and so he was.

Whatever the circumstances, Marel refused to believe that Nirvan was born to serve. He was born in chains, but that said nothing of what he was _meant_ to be. Within him, Marel saw a brilliant mind, searching for shelter in which to flourish. She focused on his deeply intelligent gaze and ignored the eerie shadow beneath his other eyelid, as she had trained herself. When she looked at it by accident, a shiver would pass through her at the odd drooping shape, leaving a half-crescent of cavernous pink flesh visible, like the slit of a human's stage mask. That was something done to him, she always reminded herself, and reflected nothing upon Nirvan himself.

Marel murmured back determination and a challenge to his worry. She took his blackened hands in her roughened palms and thickened nails, squeezing them in a mix of reassurance and urging. A look of faint surprise and consternation flashed across his face. She pressed against his hands even more tightly, shooting him a look that she almost regretted: a desperate look, a look full of rage, a look consumed by loathing for the humans. Full of accusation – that he was a coward and that she _would_ rebel, here and now, damn wisdom to hell. He flinched and drew back, the strength of her venom clear even to his vision.

"I will if you must," he said finally, breaking the air between them. Annoyed, she nodded curtly to him. But more gently, thinking on the danger that he embraced for her, she touched his hands to her cheeks. She ignored the ever-present scent of smoke imbued in his flesh and concentrated on the faint sour but earthy hint of his sweat. "If something happens," Nirvan began, looking at Marel. Marel looked back at him, reading the worry that had haunted him for the last three days.

"Nothing bad happen," she reassured him.

He shook his head firmly and gripped her tightly, as the tiger had. "If it comes to it, I wish for you to understand that you should not risk your freedom for me."

She stared at him. A veil of fine dust drifted in a ray of sun, giving him a faint glow – or perhaps it was the dehydration. Gently, she swat his arm. "We go together." He just shook his head again. This was something Marel would not accept. She seized him about the waist, burying her fingers in his feathers. "Stop," she said. With an air of resignation – how Marel hated resignation – Nirvan brushed his fingers through her hair as if soothing a child. She rejected his touch, as she had always rejected indignity. Hurt showing in his face, Nirvan released her as she leaned back by herself against the wall.

"Don't let it be for nothing," he cautioned in that perfect Begnion accent she hated.

"Never. We succeed."

Silence passed between them. Nirvan reached for her again, catching her hand. He didn't say a thing, but she felt the doubt that still pulsed through him with every heartbeat. For a fleeting moment, she feared something she could not place, something incoherent in thought and form. Before she could identify it, she said, with emphasis, "Must succeed."

* * *

She knew it would be the day of the rebellion. Marel had seen the deer butchered in the backyard at dawn. She didn't know what specifically Daeinese roasted deer rib was, but she did know that it involved deer, a meat rarely involved as the Duke favored poultry. The leaders of the rebellion wouldn't risk any conflicted signals.

And yet, before lunch, Marel reported to the Rooster, loathing the knowledge that she would serve as if it were any other day. In her first task of the morning, Marel knocked upon Mistress Fiela's door, the small square of parchment held between her thumbs in a false show of respect. At a curt, "Come in," she stepped in the room. Fiela laid upon her bed, her eyes still on her book. Her elaborately braided blonde hair tumbled around the tops of her ears and curled against her shoulders. Her lips were deep pink with nourishment and full with moisture. Although she was said to be ill, Fiela appeared to be filled with more life than Marel and Nirvan together.

Marel could hear the scuffling in her chimney. Though she knew it to be Nirvan, duty forced her to ignore him. Instead, she knelt to the side of Fiela's bed, message extended to her tender, groomed hands. Fiela took it curtly and glanced it over while Marel waited to be dismissed.

She remained bowed at Fiela's bedside while the young noble fumbled about her nightstand in search of a pen. With every passing second, she wondered if Fiela would find some cause to berate her. Marel imagined – careful not to let it show – reaching beyond Fiela's fancy braids and frilly dresses, curling her fingers around that delicate pale throat, snapping it with the power that over a decade of labor had granted. Finally, Fiela found a pen and began to write.

A clank and a gasp came from the fireplace. Marel lifted her head out of turn to look, a gesture above her station, but one that fortunately went unnoticed as Fiela herself brought her attention to the fireplace. "What is it?" she said with more annoyance than concern. Marel remembered herself and lowered her head again, eyes fixed on the side of Fiela's bed.

"An accident," came Nirvan's voice, with veiled distress, from the echoing space. "Nothing worth your worry, Mistress."

Nirvan's feet dropped with a light scuff on the cinders. Rolling her eyes as far as possible, Marel could catch a glimpse of Nirvan rubbing at his face, as if trying to remove something that had fallen into his eye. The sounds of Fiela's writing became erratic, but Marel didn't dare to steal a glance. Eventually, Fiela folded the mssage and stuffed the slip in Marel's face. "Healer's ward." Nirvan had hoisted himself back up the chimney.

Marel took the slip, trying her best not to think too hard of Nirvan murmuring, _Nothing worth your worry, Mistress... _She headed for the door, seething beneath her complacent exterior. Fiela kept on reading.

Still many hours until noon.

* * *

_Shatter_.

Marel jumped at the sound of a breaking vase and looked for its source. The small sweeping raven boy who overturned it guiltily bent to clean it up. It wasn't the signal. When the overseer came to penalize him, she kept her steady gaze on the floor. She scrubbed at a particularly stubborn scuff mark as the boy gave brave whimpers under the lash. The ornate clock on the far end of the hall told her that the Duke would soon sit for his lunch. Her ears turned this way and that expectantly. The slightest _tink_ of ceramic against stone disturbed the dusts of anticipation within her.

She passed an hour this way. By its end, discomfort crept upon her in the form of doubt. Surely the Duke would have began his lunch by now. Eventually, by the time it was too late to be called morning, a small team of guards approached her. They had many other slaves in tow, and with a quick order, brought Marel into the line. As she marched alongside the others from room to room, rounding all of the laguz in this wing of the manse into their group, she sought news in the others' faces. Yet those who met her eyes looked equally lost.

At last, they arrived in the dining room. They entered near the foot of the table, to the left. Even from her distance, Marel could see wisps of steam rising from garnished platters of large ribs. Daeinese roasted deer rib. At the other exits, similar groups of laguz also stood entrapped by guards. A few other groups arrived, and the hall was full. Still, they waited.

Marel spotted the nervous sweeping boy not far in front of her in the group. She wondered if he knew of the rebellion, if he in his youth had been entrusted with the secret and understood the severity of what was happening.

This crowd stood in daunting suspense for a full half mark before the Duke stepped into the room at the head of the table. He brought with him a single human boy, perhaps twelve years of age, with soft blonde hair and healthy cheeks. Wordlessly, he brought the boy to the table and speared a cut of rib to his plate.

His taster, Marel realized with trepidation. All noblemen had one, but for a man of relative political unimportance such as the Duke, the taster would only be used when his master had a reasonable suspicion of poisoning. The Duke fixed all of them with a cold gaze as the boy obediently ate his fill of the roasted rib with a side of leafy greens and fine wine. Those present looked amongst each other and at the child, the hall quiet but for the sounds of his chewing.

The boy's eyes wandered from group to group as he ate, always glancing back at the Duke nervously. As if sensing the death awaiting him, his look pleaded with the guards and slaves in the hall. None stopped him from eating.

He had nearly finished his plate. Suddenly, he lurched and choked out a sound. Gagging and spitting, he braced himself on the table and vomited on the white tablecloth. A ripple of tension passed through the assembled slaves. The Duke gazed at them coldly as the boy fell to the floor, struggling and seizing, giving agonized cries.

The Duke said a single word: "Guards."

All around them, one guard dove through each group and pulled out a laguz. Only feet away from her, Marel saw the sweeping boy yanked toward the front. Each ground had a guard with one laguz, facing the center. They were all terribly young. The room was quiet again. No more sound came from the taster. "Disregarding, for the moment, the lethal disrespect you have shown for your Master, you have cost me my tasting boy. I seek justice for him. Guards."

With the laguz unmoving in shock, the guards around the room slew the young laguz in near-unison. Marel's vision swam in a sickening confusion of blood and metal. She would later think that they should have revolted at this. They were all gathered in this one room, at least five laguz to each guard. Yet they all stood still, unprotesting, unfighting, unstruggling.

From a distant room, the sound of a vase crashing found its way to her ears.

A ripple of beast ears turned toward the western wall. A single tiger shouted and dove for his guard, only to be quickly speared mid-stride. Marel's feet felt frozen where they stood, even though she would later reflect that the signal had come in every way imaginable. A single laguz cawed, "It is my doing..."

When her mind and memory returned to her, she was with a different group of laguz, headed for the gardens in the back of the mansion. The guards led them toward the hideous scent of blood mingled with flowers. Days before, she had walked this very path to scrub the walls. Days before...

They rounded a corner and her empty stomach turned. The figures weren't people. Not anymore. There were seven of them, bound arms over their heads by decaying wrists to crooked wooden poles. At first she saw only blood and crude imitations of bodies. "Look!" the overseers barked at them, striking at a tiger who looked away. So she forced herself to look at them. Her mind on a dust cloud a thousand paces away, she observed the remains of wings and tails with bizarre distance. She guessed that there were three tigers, two cats, a raven and –

A hawk.

Oh Goddess, a hawk with ragged long brown hair – with a slender but masculine frame – the thousand small details of his identity had been destroyed in their cruelty and mutilation, but could it be –? Could it be?

She was faintly aware that she was crying – they were sneering, the overseers – she couldn't care less about that or the tears present on her cheeks as she fought for her breath through the shock pressing down on her chest.

Was that all her hopes were meant to be? This? Was that it? Was that all that their rebellion had done – destroyed the only comfort she had here? Killed the man who had been her closest companion for more than half her life? She couldn't imagine the coming years without Nirvan. How much longer did she have? A hundred years? Two hundred?

Could it be?

_Kill me sooner_, she thought between gasps.


	2. Part II

Thank you to those of you who are reading. It means a lot to me.

In my efforts to babble less in the notes, I've left out some important things.

1. Disclaimer. I do not own Fire Emblem or its worlds. Hopefully this was implicit.

2. I need to thank my dear editor who probably spent just as many hours slaving away at this as I have. She currently goes by "in rain" (no pun intended) here, and she is a fantastic person.

Also, if for some reason you're reading this fic labeled as tragedy but like happy endings, do not read Part 3 and we'll have a compromise here.

* * *

**No One Owns the Rain**

(II)

* * *

For the next few days, they were kept in isolation. Marel saw the same forty-some slaves and only these slaves, given unusual tasks about the estate, kept busy from first light until dusk. The shadows of other slaves passed by in the clean halls they did not scrub; in the burning lamps they did not refuel; in the water they did not retrieve. From time to time she heard orders barked from somewhere outside their perimeter of guards. At night, they were all escorted into an older, unfamiliar barrack together.

_They're keeping us from any news_, an older cat noted. She glanced amongst them with her worn face, her cautious eyes. _I knew we could not win a struggle._ Marel kept to herself, tail hugged around her shins. She couldn't find it in herself to disagree. Not anymore. She watched fading sunlight catch in the form of orange bars above her while she sat in the shadow of the wall. So let the light cage her. Freedom and spirit wallowed like guilt. She wanted nothing to do with them.

By day, she worked like hundreds of slaves once had when first beaten, newly conscious of their situation. Nights dissolved too quickly into the day, and again came hours of labor under the sun.

Marel dully registered that the old slaves were slowly returning to their shifts over the course of a week. At first she looked each hawk in the eyes, searching for steel gray and a crescent shadow. After searching every messenger, every gardener that passed by her in hopes that Nirvan had been raised to life, she tired of her hopes repeatedly dashed away again and again. As a tamed slave would, she waited in the shadowed corridors, a dirtied sight unfit to be seen, running errands for her masters.

She noticed that the Rooster was no longer about, nor the middle-aged tiger who had cautioned her. _Are they the other figures in the backyard? _she wondered. She shook her head in amazement that the Rooster or the tiger from the barracks had ever been involved. But the Rooster had been there that morning before they were rallied. The memory of his voice lingered at the edge of her recollection. If he were indeed among the punished, he had been more of a rebellious leader than a spy amongst her people. If such contented crows could be loyal, she found it easier to believe that one of their own could have so disloyal as to give them away. Or perhaps he was moved away after having done his work, every bit of a traitor as Marel had judged him for after all. There was only one in which she could be certain of her trust, and he had passed beyond the heavenly gate.

As the old slaves returned to their shifts, all of them were assigned to different barracks than before. Marel would stay in one of the newer buildings close to the outer wall. The unfamiliar scents of slaves she had never met pierced somewhere beneath her frigid defense. She missed the only comforts she once had: the familiar smell of her many roommates, the chirping of a nest of crickets each night by the window, and Nirvan.

One night Marel awoke and realized that she was thirsty. She had been dehydrated for every day for the last month, since the drought began in earnest – this night was notable in that she felt it in her woolen tongue, fire lining delicate areas of her skin, pain in her head with life parading before her as in fever – her desire for water found itself in every part of her. She touched a hand to her cracked lips and pulled herself into a sitting position. The others in her barracks were still deep asleep in needful rest.

Water. The land was still dry. They were slaves, lives worth less by each hour of drought. Eventually, the water required to sustain them would be worth far more than their lives. At that point, their only value would be, perhaps, their meat.

A flicker of her old defiance smoldered dimly – not out of spirit, but desperation. Could she try running alone? There was nothing left for her here. She had absolutely nothing to lose.

_Except this life_, she mulled as she laid down to catch what rest she could before morning. _And what __worth does that have?_

* * *

Perhaps the gait of her step or her total silence gave her thoughts away to the old cat. When Marel lay to sleep dreamlessly that night, she pricked her ears at the sound of a shuffling approach and opened her eyes. A bent, wrinkled woman slowly set herself down next to Marel, pain evident in her movements. _Young sister,_ she murmured in a hoarse, strained voice. _You have thoughts of the gate?_

_The gate of this place and the gate of the next are the same to me_, Marel murmured quietly, so that only the elder could hear.

_There have been many who left in that way_, the elder mused without judgment. _I warn you that many only return here for the worse._

_Of the others?_

_I have heard of... a few_. At this, Marel gazed upon her fiercely as the elder cat contemplated and hesitated. _What little word I have received spoke of caverns by the border north, between two human nations. It is far closer than the homeland. They settle there in hiding, it seems..._

_North. Thank you, old mother._

The older slave shook her head and chided, _You think nothing of the rest? All those who have fallen?_

_What use is it to dwell on them?_ Marel responded jadedly, closing her eyes with her senses pointed north. She assumed that the old woman showed a subtle sign of disapproval before leaving. Inwardly, she wished she had the energy to thank her more.

Marel's mind drifted to a girl in her past, proud of who she was, proud for all the laguz who could not be. She would not have fled without leading the liberation of her kin. Without Nirvan, with the great failure of their rebellion, she had no great plans for the future of her race. She just wanted...

Water. Above all, she wanted the water that was her right.

* * *

The next morning she overheard the whispers of another slave. From the fragments that reached her, Marel gathered that the Duke had caught word of it before it was to take place. No one knew who his informant was, or if this informant gave any order to the madness committed, but the leaders – and some others, who happened to move while under watch – were picked out, flayed and cut in the backyard as an example, some while still alive.

The Rooster was at the head of it, a slave whispered to another in the halls. It truly was The Rooster that she had heard at that last moment. One of the slaves in the conversation gave a raspy breath. Marel could hear him murmur, _I was his second in command. He... his words spared me._

_They didn't spare Nirvan_, Marel reminded herself bitterly as she cleaned a vase that should have been broken.

They didn't spare that middle-aged tiger, either, who warned her of the rebellion's foolishness. He wouldn't have led the revolt. Marel was sure of it. Yet he paid the price for the others' choices. Was that how Nirvan came to die? Through the humans' apathy toward justice? Through the masses' cowardice? He was too good to deserve that. Marel's pride returned in the form of faint indignity before her own guilt came upon her.

When she finished polishing the vase, a summons came down to her from the healers' ward. She had scarcely ever been told to perform duties there, as most of the tasks performed required either expertise or close contact with vulnerable humans, neither of which were entrusted to laguz. Once, a few years ago, she had helped bring up a new supply of gauze from the warehouse. Marel assumed that this task would be something similar.

The healer's ward wanted her to fetch a barrel of water for their uses. _Water._ She obligingly took their slip of notice and headed for the warehouse, now more heavily guarded than the dungeons – a fact she noted with wry amusement. The guards read her slip and let her remove one barrel. She strapped it onto her back and set off obediently.

Careful not to make her greed apparent, she clung to the bottom of the barrel with mousetrap fingers, never wanting to let her treasure go. Her eyes darted about for guards the entire way as she carried the barrel back to the healers' ward. It seemed that every hallway, every corridor was watched by a human eye. But finally, in the slaves' old stairwell behind the kitchen, she found a moment to put her mouth to the tap. She sucked the life out of the barrel in greedy gulps. Her thirst not satisfied but her stomach filled, she licked her lips thankfully and carried the rest to the ward.

The head nurse took the barrel without comment or new orders, so as Marel was trained to do, she stood by for more tasks to come. As she waited she took in the sight of the comfortable ward. Few laguz slaves could expect to be treated here. Only those highly valued by their masters would be worth the expense of medical attention. Laborers could be replaced cheaply.

Nonetheless, there were two laguz resting here. She recognized the raven girl as one of the master's entertainers – a singer, perhaps, though Marel couldn't remember exactly. A cleric was busying herself with the girl's throat. If infection destroyed her voice, the raven girl could look forward to a life of labor and misery like the rest of them. The other was also one of the bird tribe, a hawk with bandages about his head bedridden in the corner. The length of writing on the parchment affixed to his cot suggested that he had been here for an extended stay.

The hawk's back was toward her, but there was something about the set of his wings that reminded Marel of Nirvan. The faint hope that he could have been lying here in the healer's ward, alive, stung at her emptiness more than no hope at all. After all, it was probably just another hawk, like all the rest of them.

An hour passed without a laborer's task in the healers' ward. Then the absurd happened.

A hush quickly passed over the ward. Marel glanced to the right, then immediately lowered her eyes. Mistress Fiela stepped in, her fashionable arched shoes clicking on the floor. _What is _she_ doing here?_ Marel wondered. Mistress Fiela was forbidden from the healer's ward, by her father's fear that the illness here would pass to her. Of course, none would dare to report an infraction unless the Master asked.

Mistress Fiela conferred with a nurse, then approached the hawk in the back. "How are you managing?" she said with surprising tenderness.

"Better, Mistress," the hawk replied with a familiar polite tenor.

Marel froze. It was Nirvan.

"Let me see." Fiela undid the bandage about his head. Marel noticed that the bandages had wrapped around his eyes. When Fiela removed them with abnormal delicacy (Marel had never known Fiela to be delicate in any sense of the word), Nirvan's single eye fluttered open.

Marel flinched by the door. Even at this distance, she could see perfectly well that it was red and inflamed. A fine crust of yellow material lined the edges. His remaining eye was festering. If he hadn't been Fiela's pet, he certainly would have been left to blindness and death. But he _was_ Fiela's favorite, had been for as long as she could remember, and for once Marel didn't feel the slightest twinge of jealousy or disgust. Nirvan was alive. Fiela was saving him. Marel would have thanked her, if she thought Fiela would appreciate any such display. Instead, acknowledging that they were meant to be in opposition, Marel stayed quiet and motionless by the door.

"Can you see me?" Fiela asked, a hint of playfulness about her.

"I can."

"It still looks awful," she mused, lightly turning Nirvan's head side to side. "Does it hurt?"

"Less so, Mistress."

"So it _does_ still hurt," she observed. "I don't think you'll be going up the chimney anymore. Perhaps I can ask my father to have you replace Ranya." Fiela continued to talk absently to herself as she beckoned over a nurse. "Ranya has had plenty of other duties of late. You should be permitted, even though you are a man... male, that is." The nurse drew up a bitter-smelling solution from a kettle and went to both of them, rinsing at his eye and patting at it with a clean cloth. Turning to the nurse, she said, "How is he progressing?"

"The festering seems to be healing, milady. We think he will survive with his vision in full."

"That's good." Then, back to Nirvan, Fiela continued, "My father wants you to return as the next early-morning supervisor, but I won't have any of that. Daddy will listen to me. I'll remind him that the last beast given that power abused it." Marel watched Nirvan intently for a response. A perfect actor as ever, he stayed silent, concentrating on the nurse's ministrations. "We'll have a human do it. You'll stay with me."

"You are generous, Mistress."

"Recover quickly, won't you?" Fiela patted Nirvan's hand and left his bedside. Marel averted her eyes as Mistress Fiela glanced at her with a flash of disgust before passing through the doorway.

Marel watched the nurse attend to Nirvan's eye, wishing she could capture Nirvan's attention. She knew better than to publicly attract the attention of another slave. With his eye as it was, and in the process of being treated, it was also unlikely that he would look over to her. And if she missed this chance... when could she expect to contact him again? He had no idea where she had been relocated, and she was almost never asked to do tasks for Mistress Fiela.

At last, a nurse sent her away with a message. She glanced at where Nirvan rested on the cot, a fresh set of bandages wrapped about his eyes. Marel's pulse beat in her ears as she took the slip of paper. She had a chance here. A chance. How?

Glancing toward Nirvan, she said as loudly as she dared, "Will send, ma'am." Nirvan stirred slightly in response. _I'm here. Alive_, she thought, willing him to understand.

* * *

Knowing Nirvan to be alive, Marel tucked away the plans she had crafted of death or escape. With renewed awareness of the fragility of their lives, she put aside her thoughts of freedom. Here, however wretched, they could both live.

She had faith that Nirvan would seek her out soon. Every evening, she waited shortly before sunset for him to come find her again and restore her days to what they had been before the failed revolt. After his apparent death, Nirvan's life alone was enough for her to bide her miserable existence until its end.

Perhaps its end would be nearer than she thought. The drought continued. A different group of laguz was sent for water every few days. Now water and food were rationed so tightly that the slaves in her barracks only saw a thin slice of bread and a mouthful of water each morning. As far as Marel was aware, the Duke had even begun to restrict his bathing. The daily death of slaves was becoming customary. It wasn't above her notice, either, that every few days a portion of the laborers altogether disappeared, usually those among the weak.

The old cat woman that had consoled her in her darkest hour was among the first to vanish. That night, she quietly murmured a death rite from her native land that she could hardly remember. She felt that it was important to grant this to one of her old kind. When she had been a child at the funeral of an old man she never knew, she had spent little time memorizing the rites, mouthing them along with the gathered crowd as she stared at the mound of earth and wondered when she could return to play. How foolish she seemed to herself now, that child blessed to be free among her own people, ignorant and uncaring of their traditions. For the first time in years since her capture, she felt homesick again, truly homesick, homesick for a land she remembered only in faint concepts. Green. Forest. Heat. Comfort. Family. Freedom. Her memories, once kept strong through nights of weeping and reminiscing, now existed only in faint fragments, long eroded from pain and disuse.

Now she turned her memories over and over, trying to brush them free of grime and recover that elegy she had forgotten. She worked through it in snatches and fragments, from the beginning she was certain of – _hasshure nye mrit hea owil rren imiur:_ Ashera, receive this soul who wanders to your gates – through that maze of "May She bless" statements that always eluded her, into the only phrase she had memorized in earnest. _Ayainr owrr miu nye nainyu ma liel murr iit. _May death be as gentle as a warm summer rain.

The death of the elder woman was different from the thought of Nirvan's death. It was not so much their closeness, as they knew each other for perhaps a week, if that. Her death reminded Marel of their kind, the many old mothers who suffered in Begnion – and their death in this cold, foreign land. They deserved, at least, these old rites, as poorly as she performed them. Marel thought that when she died herself, she would like them murmured for her.

* * *

Her barracks thinned to perhaps thirty individuals out of the seventy that used to rest there. Marel assumed she was spared for now due to her youth and apparent robustness. _From stealing water_, she thought to herself with inexplicable shame. She guessed that the screenings tried to select those most likely to survive and work on little water. In that, she had cheated them all – her masters and her equals.

Still, she had a history of disobedience, and the possibility that she would be selected next nagged at her each morning when she reported to the early-morning supervisor, the human who replaced the Rooster. Though she doubted that human himself had the privilege of choosing, her instinct told her that it was this man who divided the weak from the strong, and sent them to part ways forever.

One evening after she had survived five daily selections, her ears pricked to the sounds of familiar, poorly concealed footsteps. The lock gave a click, and the door slowly eased open. Her roommates all sat up in alarm; Marel had forgotten that these laguz were unfamiliar with Nirvan's visits. Nirvan looked like a devil when he entered, too – pale and gaunt from illness, sole eye still reddened.

_Calm yourselves,_ Marel murmured. _This is a friend of mine, who visits in evenings when he is able._

_Should he be caught, this will be upon your head_, a youthful, powerful cat hissed from across the room. Marel knew from past experience that it would be far worse for them to let their Masters know of any meeting, as they tended to assume that it was the folly of the entire barrack. They all understood that, and turned a blind eye.

Marel smiled to Nirvan, and he nodded his head in greeting. He sat across from her, catching the thin slant of sun through the window. Marel reveled in the magic of seeing him alive in the flesh once more. "Thought you dead."

"Not yet," Nirvan replied. He pulled his knees before him and rested his chin on his arms. "I caught rot in my eye shortly before … it happened."

Marel inspected Nirvan's single eye. It looked better than it had from a distance. Fine blood vessels stood out, and a faint mist covered his iris, but it was still undeniably his, even if injured. "Mistress fixed."

"She is. I am indebted to her, as always."

Despite what she had learned in her previous weeks of servitude, Marel still hardened her gaze to Nirvan's words. In the presence of a human, she would have no quarrel with such words. But here, between them, as if he truly felt that he owed his benevolent and condescending captor? The woman who treated him as a pet, and let his other eye be gouged in her own defense?

Nirvan raised both eyebrows gently. "She is my Mistress. Am I to defy her?"

Marel shook her head, not out of admission, but out of distaste for the topic. Nirvan agreed with her, that she knew. He was merely so accustomed to his position that, like a madman, he believed in his illusions wholeheartedly out of self-preservation. He was always this way, and Marel supposed that she should learn from it.

Nirvan studied her, and so she felt compelled to study him in return. He was thinner from his infection. Although he was mostly pale from the time spent inside in the healers' ward, a fever's flush colored his cheeks. "You have thinned, Marel," he noted, brushing a finger against her cheek.

With a gesture to the numbers in the room about her, she expressed that the barracks had thinned as well. "Ration. Some chosen to die." She locked her gaze with his, letting him understand – _I am no master's favorite. We meet on borrowed time._

"I could plead your case with my Mistress," Nirvan suggested quietly, trying to avoid eavesdroppers. The sharp-eared laguz in the room heard anyway, some giving no outward response, others glancing bitterly at his privilege. "If it means your life..."

Marel dismissed this with a firm jerk of her head. "Only work once." And he had already used that opportunity to curry favor for her, back when he – the prim and decorated supervisor – and she – the still fresh-faced slave of hard labor – were strangers.

Though his station in Fiela's favor was great when compared to the laborers, Nirvan had once worked himself so highly in the favor of his masters that no one would have thought of forcing him to clean chimneys. He was unique in his high intelligence and total obedience. Their masters had great use for a presentable slave (there was a saying amongst Senators of "feathers before fur") with a mind for letters without the drive to use them for sub-human gain. Though as a child he had merely dusted the library, as a young man he was given to the current Duke – then still a youth – to accompany him in the bearing of books and scribing of notes in his studies. His station was experimental. Such a role had previously only ever been delegated to a human, but the Duke was then still young enough to be open to the advantages of a learned slave who would stay youthful through several generations.

He was, in the eyes of all the laguz, a human with wings. And he was, in the eyes of almost all the humans, a flying rat above his station. Marel often mused that it could have been loneliness that drove him to his absurd act of charity.

Marel was never favored – far from it. She was too willful to be a proper slave. That was apparent from a month into her taming. With every muscle of her body sore from work, every inch of her skin crossed by a lash mark, still she spat at the feet of an overseer. Marel could still remember the beating that came after, and the horrifying realization that he had no intention to stop.

And then it stopped. She became aware of the murmuring of a demure tenor voice against the angry, harsh words of the overseer. She didn't understand their language at the time, except for some paltry words to indicate the start and finish of their tasks. Marel never discovered what Nirvan's negotiations were. But she did know that afterward, Nirvan draped his cloak about her, heedless of the blood, and led her – supporting much of her weight – whimpering and limping back to her barracks. He still had both his eyes at the time. He consoled her, not with his words as she understood none of them, but with his tone of voice and gentle gaze. As he sat with her by the wall in the sunlight, she knew instinctively that he had saved her.

From then on he visited frequently, though she didn't know why. She had already been distant in her willfulness, but contact with Nirvan further marked Marel as outcast among her roommates. In a burst of anger, a tigress once snapped at her that Nirvan was no laguz. How could she accept one of their tormentors? He had been taught in human letters; he had followed the Duke about like a companion; he shuttled them each morning from their barracks to their labor. The tigress sniffed and mumbled that the only compensation was that he was no longer held so highly by their masters. Now, instead of Fiela's scribe and tutor, he was kept around for labor like the rest of them. Still, he was a pet of theirs!

Following that incident, Marel asked him why it was that he was no longer their supervisor, though still keeping quiet about all the things she shouldn't have known. Nirvan had raised his eyebrows at her and replied, "I traded it for you."

And now Nirvan no longer possessed any ability to bargain for her life. She doubted that his word could hold any weight in the face of drought. This Nirvan was a chimney sweeper, with an eye gouged for a count of perversion, with his life intact only by Mistress Fiela's whim. Whatever security that whim gave him, he had no more power than the rest of them.

"Give you thanks."

Nirvan regarded her questioningly, more disheveled than before, more gaunt than before, one eye missing and the other red. He raised his eyebrows in the very same motion as he had upon revealing his sacrifice. "You are welcome. What are these thanks for?"

"All." Marel touched her fingertips to Nirvan's cheeks, lifting his head with her motion and studying his eye. "Life. Talking. Water."

Nirvan laid his own hands around hers, gazing upon her with the same gentle fondness of their first meeting beneath a window slit. His hands were rough with callouses and cracked in the dry air, where they were once as dainty and unworn as a noble's. "I thank you for all these things as well." Marel made a sound faintly in confusion. "Perhaps you don't know. Please know that you've given as much to me."

Nirvan took her hands from his face and pressed them tightly against his chest. His presence still lingered after darkness came and he left.

* * *

Marel woke abruptly in the middle of the night to a hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake. Annoyed, she peered at her visitor and found none other than Nirvan, terrified, beckoning her. The scent of fresh blood hung around him. He cupped his hand around her ear and whispered, "Lead us outside, then around to the right. There should be a shielded area." Still tired, but curious and anxious, she scrambled to her feet and silently led them out of the barracks.

Once outside in the bizarre nighttime world of the Duke's estate – she had only been outside her barracks in the dark a handful of times before – Marel followed Nirvan's instructions to the side of the barracks, into an area where the building dipped inward, forming a small alcove. She directed Nirvan by the shoulders into that area, laying flat against the wall to minimize the chance of being seen by guards.

With a half-moon giving enough light for Marel's eyes, she could see now that the blood she smelled was spattered on his chest and his tattered pants. He touched his hands together self-consciously, drawing Marel's attention to similar ugly patterns on his fingers. "Who?" Marel whispered, gesturing to his hands.

"Mistress Fiela is dead," he whispered back, his hands visibly shaking now.

Stunned, Marel stared at her quivering companion before seizing his arms, hissing, "What?"

With his voice rising dangerously in volume, he stammered, "It was... I don't... I didn't mean..." Nirvan shook his head and clamped a hand over his mouth. He closed his eyes, exhaling and pressing that hand to his eyebrows, smearing small orange streaks of blood on his face.

"You... did you...?" Nirvan stiffened in response and Marel knew it must be true. Though her head flooded with questions, she knew there was no time to ask any of them. She brought her gaze to the walls of the estate, judging that they were too high to climb over. "Stay," she whispered to Nirvan. Marel darted from the recess and peered beyond the barracks to the back gates. On this side, a single sentry paced back and forth, looking dazed and bored. There would be more, she knew, on the outside.

Ducking back into the alcove, she seized both of Nirvan's hands and pulled them toward her. He lifted his head toward her in desperate confusion. "We run," she hissed quietly.

"How?" he whispered back hopelessly.

"Not matter, how." She shook her head at him, a gesture lost on his night vision. If they stayed, Nirvan would certainly die by morning. In a commanding whisper, she told him, "I bump you, you climb on back." As she dropped his hands, he lowered his forearms slowly in confusion.

She focused on nature. She thought of underbrush and earth beneath her feet, wind blowing past her face. Her mind touched the lock of a cage long rusted over, and despite hunger and thirst, she willed herself to force the door open.

A quick, hot flash of pain ran through her as the command of a host of almost foreign muscles came under her command. She struggled for breath and staggered. Marel saw Nirvan's waist at eye level and knew she had succeeded.

Marel nudged one leg with her head. Nirvan bumped against the wall as he stepped back in surprise. She gave a soft purr and nudged his thigh again. "Dear Goddess, they forgot the wolfsbane?" he murmured, tentatively reaching out and finding Marel's cat form. Marel herself wasn't sure why she succeeded this time when, at many other times, she had not. Her relief and urgency stifled her curiosity, and she impatiently circled around Nirvan, urging him – nearly knocking him off of his feet – onto her back. Hesitant arms found their way around her neck, and though some instinct protested at the presence of a snare of flesh about her throat, she ignored that. She paced away from the alcove and looked up to the roof of the barracks for one gauging, self-doubting moment.

Then she leapt onto the roof, her front paws seizing it and her hindquarters dangling for a moment – around her neck, Nirvan's arms tightened in terror – as she struggled, but managed, to pull herself on top. For an instant she stood there on the roof, looking over all the rooftops and spires of the grounds, quiet and unassuming, gently touched by white light. What a dirty place this was, for such a calm night.

Turning around, she faced the gate and curled herself into her haunches, measuring the height of the gate and estimating the location of ground outside with her eyes. With another leap, she cleared the gate easily, landing with a slight _thump_ on the barren, heat-charred ground outside. She felt Nirvan still there, fearfully clinging to her back. _Good_. Without a backwards glance, she took off across the barren earth, bounding lightly over dirt under the moon, Nirvan present but almost weightless.

And that was it! _Free_! She was free! Had it always been so easy? Marel bounded over the earth, she and Nirvan alone, across the yellowed grass and between barren trees. Was this way even north? She wasn't sure which direction she was headed – only that she felt a strong pull toward it.

After a few minutes, everything seemed to catch up with her all at once. Her muscles complained, her head spun, her lungs ached for breath. Nirvan became a mighty burden across her back. Panting, she paced to a stop in a dried forest and lay down, nudging Nirvan off. He complied, pale and off-balance. With a flash of pain, then a surge of exhaustion and relief, Marel felt herself change back and fell onto the ground. She gasped for breath and looked up at Nirvan, asking him, "Water?"

Nirvan rose, fumbled at his waist, and withdrew the waterskin. To Marel's relief, he had filled it sometime before they left. Although the waterskin was flaccid and just over half-full, any water at all encouraged her. She took it gratefully and tried to sip slowly. Even when Marel tore herself from its metallic lip, she felt that she hadn't made up for what she exerted during their run.

Marel gestured for Nirvan to sit before realizing, again, that he could not see her motions. "Sit," she said with growing impatience for words.

He sat where he was, blindly groping around on the ground. "Marel, where are we?"

Still panting, her vision throbbing with each heartbeat, she looked about, trying to think of the right words for Nirvan's sake. "Very open. Near trees, but no leaf. Grass dead. Mountain near." She pointed toward where she knew the manse would be, even though she knew he could not see her. "Duke house far away." She crawled nearer to Nirvan, touching one searching hand. Raising it closer to her face and touching the sticky half-dried spots of blood, she asked, "What, Fiela?"

In a hoarse voice, Nirvan began, "She called me to her room.

"_I stabbed her. It was an accident. I... my sight has not been the same since my eye festered. I was cleaning the fireplace... she talked to me, I... I was thinking, then suddenly she was at the end of my poker... she gave a little wail... in truth, a gasp... she just slumped, I..._

"_I'm sorry, it's hard to explain. I simply... let... let me start from earlier._

"_It was... well past sundown when Mistress Fi... sorry, Marel. It is habit. Fiela sent for me with the order of sorting out some new nightgowns from her wardrobe as the days grow hotter. When I arrived, she was sitting upon her bed with a thick book upon her lap. She told me, _'Come here,'_ and insisted I sit next to her on the pillows. I obeyed... The page was a blur to me. No matter; she read it. She read an anecdote from an ancient historian. It was an account of the Zunanma... I... saw from the cover that its author was a scholar from before the foundation of Begnion._

"_The account was strange. The Zunanma were described as creatures caught between our beast forms and a human's form. When Fiela finished, she said, _'Laughable, isn't it.' _She looked at me and said, _'Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if that were the truth. It's ridiculous, of course.' _She … I should not. No, Marel, it... is fine. I will tell you. Give me one moment._

"_She took my hands and pulled me toward her. I remembered the last time she... you remember that... I, I thought to myself that I couldn't go through that again. I only have one eye left! With the festering, I __had nearly lost it. When I jerked away, she folded her arms and ordered me back to the chimney, no matter the condition of my eye._

"_I thought about... It is not safe to say it. No, not even here. Marel... Marel, please. These are things I cannot say to anyone. No, Marel, I do not lack trust in you. I can hardly think of it to myself a second time. It brings me to despondency._"

Marel laid her arms around Nirvan's neck and leaned toward him in an embrace. He let her pull him gently onto the dry earth, staring at the blurred lights in the sky. He lay on his side, bound wings a dead weight behind him, the night's dry silence swallowing up every last word. Finally, his face twisted into anger, an expression Marel had scarcely ever seen upon it in full. "She thinks she can order affection from me! Never mind everything else they have owned since birth. She treats me like a pet to dress in bonnets and walk through gardens and she expects I would still..." He shook his head in a violent motion. "When I thought of the Zunanma, how they were one of us – all of the things they do to keep us miserable, how much of it is lies?"

"All," Marel murmured.

"As I struck at the fireplace, she wept at me. That human, permitted to weep so easily. The more she screamed of her weak blood and her loneliness, the more I focused on scraping the ash stuck to the sides. Her words only made me burn with anger. I struck at the fireplace harder and harder – she reached for the poker – she wanted me to stop and pay attention to her? – her hands slipped and with my next stroke I..."

All the color and anger drained from his face. Marel clung to him persistently as he shook. "It was horrible, what I did. She favored me. She sheltered me. My Mistress was kind to me, and I..."

"Not think this now," Marel chastised. "Just said. Hate of her."

Nirvan closed his eye, his pale thin face looking lifeless. With a trembling voice, he said, "Are we truly free now?"

"We are free," she assured him. "Free."


	3. Part III

**No One Owns the Rain**

(III)**  
**

* * *

In the morning, Marel moved her tongue to find grit in her mouth. She wished she could be rid of it, but her mouth was too dry to spit. Between this and the increasingly unpleasant light in her eyes, Marel woke quickly. She found herself looking at the sky. Well past sunrise. She reached over and shook Nirvan awake.

With a start, Nirvan pulled himself up and looked about quickly. It occurred to Marel that this was the first time Nirvan had a look at where they had camped for the night. "Far from humans," she offered cheerfully. In truth, she worried that the wilted trees would give them poor cover from the road. Hopefully they were not being hunted.

They walked. Dust plumed about them as they tread through the barren once-forest. The earth beneath their feet was cracked like an eerie cobblestone path of nature. They were driven by base fear, until the light waned and Nirvan fell behind. By the time she rested, the day's events hung as a painful haze in her memory. She leaned against a tree.

A faint clink. Humans? She turned her ears all about, trying to locate their pursuers. Nothing. Rising, the clink came again, along with familiar weight on her collarbone. She realized it came from her own neck – the slave collar still upon her. Fatigued and agitated, she clawed at it until her fingers were sore, to no success. She resolved to work upon it in the morning.

Although still dry and pained, her mind was clearer in the day, readied with thoughts as if she hadn't slept at all. As they picked themselves up onto their feet, Marel eyed Nirvan critically. "Turn," she said with an accompanying gesture. She stopped him with his wings toward her, and she inspected their bindings. An iron band held the two main bones together, just below the joint. One seam showed in the visible upper sides of the bands. Pulling his feathers this way and that, Marel saw that the second seam had been sealed on the underside, well-covered by the bound wings. Both were covered in forty years of rust. "Think can remove."

"Will it matter?" he asked respectfully.

Marel brought a hand to the fifteen-year-old band around her own throat. "Want off." She found a stone fitting her purposes amongst the rocks lining a dried stream. Nirvan knelt complacently before her, back and wings trustingly toward her as she steadied her arm, stone in hand. With two sharp blows, the weak and rusted joint cracked. Marel pried it off, gently working the ring through worn piercings. At last, she abandoned the ring on the ground and patted at Nirvan to indicate that she had finished.

With a cracking of joints, he stiffly moved his wings apart. Those curtains of feathers limply swayed, nothing at all like the graceful motion of flight. "They are heavy," he noted with a mix of awe and fear.

"Can fly?" Marel inquired, sealing away her doubt. His wings seemed too small for his body, even perhaps too heavy for his body, as he stood unsteadily under this new balance.

"No," he answered with certainty.

"How not? Flap. Is instinct."

"Even a wild bird is first a fledgling," Nirvan observed, turning to face her with his wings hanging unnaturally. Marel felt for an instant that they must have grown in all the wrong ways – irreversibly? – and pushed the thought away. "I have been bound all my life. I am no longer young. It will be a miracle if I can ever fly."

Marel shook her head at him and pulled at the collar about her neck. She had gathered much about it last night: it was cruder in design, a loop with a nail secured through the back. Because Nirvan had developed difficulties with his vision – as evidenced in part by the dead noble who must have been discovered, speared in her bedroom – Marel decided not to ask him of any favors about her neck. After considerable twisting, pulling, and chafing, in the lucidity of day and with a dozen inventive ways, Marel gave up the idea of removing her own collar for the present. She reasoned that once she was home, there would be a number of talented craftsmen who could help her with it. She left the accursed but familiar thing about her neck and urged Nirvan up with a quick gesture. They had to keep moving.

* * *

An hour into their march, Nirvan began to lag behind, holding a hand next to his swollen eye. "Come," Marel urged. "Much Begnion. Must reach north cave."

"I am sorry," he said deferentially, jogging to catch up with Marel.

Marel turned her gaze back on the path before her, letting Nirvan catch up as he would, but after two more such incidents she reached for his arm and felt something wrong. A touch to his forehead revealed a fever's bloom. Sternly, she angled Nirvan's eye toward her – he winced – and examined it. She let herself growl. The festering had again begun to take over.

She was no medic and knew of no herbs that could help his condition, but she was sound enough of mind to reason that the lack of water, the dry dust, and the long marches had enough to do with it. "Climb on," she said, motioning for him to climb on her back. He obeyed, and Marel thought to herself that in their deprivation, he had become lighter than a barrel of water. Her thirst brought sandy flecks to her vision and strain to her movements, but she knew that Nirvan lived on borrowed time. The only thing she could do for him was to reach the settlement.

And they would need water.

She gazed up at the endlessly clear sky, that sun beaming its harsh light over them. Surely they wouldn't die here. The drought had to end sometime, much as their enslavement came to its predestined end. The Goddess, ancient friend of the laguz and protector of the miserable, would rain for them. They had surmounted the impossible – escaped that prison – become free as the Goddess desired. Marel felt confident that she would watch over the rest. It wouldn't be right for all their efforts to be wasted. In the memory of those seven rotting in the back of the manor and the sacrifice they made... it wouldn't be right for them to fail now.

This drove Marel on, step after step, the shadow of Nirvan's wings swaying with her gait. Sometime after midday, Nirvan fell asleep. She tried her best to soften her steps as she tread. Nirvan's hot breaths tickled the side of her neck. He was still alive now. There was still a world of possibilities so long as he had his life. Step after step, on and on throughout the day, with a dry and empty stomach under a merciless sky...

* * *

Night came too slowly and too quickly. The cool air soothed her woolen tongue and brought relief to her overheated skin. She gazed at the northern mountain range, gauging that perhaps they were a little closer. How much ground had they covered? She would have to move faster.

For a day and night, they traveled in this way, barely sustained on what little water they had brought in their waterskin. No rain.

On the third night of their escape, Mare glanced at where she laid Nirvan to rest on a bed of dried leaves. He roused for a few hazy moments, long enough for her to coax him to drink the last of the water. With only muttered, confused fragments of conversation, he slipped back into sleep. Sticky dark fluid crusted his eyelashes together. Marel couldn't understand how Nirvan's condition was worsening so quickly. Only three days ago, he had been recovering, she thought to herself in frustration. Marel's stomach contracted with hunger and she hugged her legs closer in self-comfort. All day she had looked for something, anything edible as she walked, but the area was dry as a desert and nearly as barren. Yet Nirvan never complained. She resolved to show the same bravery.

There would time for eating and drinking when she reached the mountain settlement, she told herself. With an impatient glance at the moon, Marel nudged Nirvan awake back into the torment of the dry night and helped him into her back. She kept walking through the night, ignoring the cries of her body to rest. Her legs trembled with fatigue and stung as if laced by lightning. Only her resolve kept her from stumbling.

By morning, she had succeeded in reaching the foot of her mountains, to her delight. She hadn't expected salvation to be so close, yet here it was. "Are here," she whispered to Nirvan. Now all they would have to do was...

Find the caves.

She swept her gaze up the steep mountain before her. A faint trail wove through the barren trees further up the mountain, over a ledge and beyond her sight. Nirvan weakly lifted his head from her shoulder. "Is too bad, cannot fly," she murmured. It would make it so much easier to find the settlement by sky. The following silence made Marel shift around his weight, regretting those words. Even if Nirvan knew how to fly, she knew he no longer had the strength to search for a cave.

"Marel, you should know," he murmured, his voice barely loud enough to reach her ears. "I cannot see."

Marel froze at these words. She set him down by a tree and raised his eyelid, though even her gentle touch caused pain to flash across his features. The sight of how far the rot had gone caused her to retreat with revulsion. What little knowledge she had of healing spoke to her that flesh so dead should be removed, and the wound burned to seal it. She couldn't bring the idea of removing Nirvan's other eye to her lips, even if it were to save him.

_Besides, he will die anyway_, something said faintly in her head. She shook her head until the voice vanished.

"It's only a matter of time," he said hoarsely. Marel could see his lips barely moving.

"Nonsense," she whispered fiercely. "Are here. Need only find them." She ushered him back onto her back. He laid so limply that she felt as if he were a corpse.

The mountain slope would have been easier to scale had she taken her cat form, but there was no way Nirvan could endure that. Rubbing her cracked calloused hands against each other, she began to climb the mountain.

Climbing was easier than she thought it would be – at first, until she raised her head and saw the nearest ledge still yards away from her head. Struggling to maintain her grip, she found herself in a world of tumbling rocks and loose footholds. The stones beneath her feet suddenly dislodged and rolled, and she found herself dangling by her hands. Memories flashed before her – dangling from the roof – how easy it had been to climb on. Steeling herself against pain as the skin upon her hands split, Marel pulled them upward with all her strength and grabbed at another jutting stone barely within her grasp.

For a sickening instant, the stone moved under her hand _and Marel saw herself falling, Nirvan's feathers trailing all around her, she might have been screaming but her mind was too busy to know if there was sound _the stone budged, but held. No time for rest – she placed her foot on her old support and continued to climb.

When she finally hauled herself onto the ledge, she let herself drop to her stomach and pant for breath. The world swayed before her in a curtain of bright dust. More than air... more than air, she wanted to suck water from the air. For a brief moment she tried to, before realizing the absurdity of her actions.

As she rose, she felt Nirvan's lax arms slip from around her neck. She turned around and grabbed him as he slumped. "Nirvan?" She laid him on his back, one wing spread to either side, and felt for a pulse and a breath. To her relief, movement met her fingers. But it was clear to her that she had to hurry.

As she assessed her possibilities, she wanted to cry, _Where is my rain?_

They had an empty waterskin, the clothes upon their backs, and their lives – and the last might not hold much longer. In no way could she afford to scale another precarious height as she had. Making her decision quickly, Marel turned Nirvan on his side and laid his wings together as they had been in binding. Summoning strength from every last reserve, she focused again on her inner nature...

With a flash of numbness like an infestation of ants down her mouth, down her ears, running through her blood, her concentration broke and she found herself unchanged. She redoubled her efforts, screaming her way as she forced herself to transform. She clawed her way through a nest of pins, tearing into her hands and feet until they were filled with such burning that they could feel no more pain. She ripped at that cage door until, with a hot burst as if her chest had torn apart, she fell onto the ground, dimly registering that she had succeeded.

As gently as she could, she bit his wings in her mouth and lifted him off the ground, as if transporting a kitten by the scruff of its neck. With a leap less powerful than she had imagined, she worked her way up the mountainside.

Narrow ledges eventually gave way to a more level area, and Marel, exhausted, set Nirvan down gently and let the full force of her bipedal form flood back into her. Her vision clouded, and she reeled back to lie down until her head cleared.

She felt like she never wanted to lift herself again. Eventually, she willed herself to Nirvan's side. His skin still feverish and his breaths still shallow, Marel sensed that his condition had not improved. Examining him further, she lacked evidence to conclude that he was getting any worse, either. That much was a relief.

Marel sat back and simply looked at him: pale despite the sun, comatose and looking as lifeless as the dirt around them, one eyelid deeply sunken in vacancy, the other seeping putrid liquid. Giving in to her discomfort at last, she ripped a strip of cloth from the neck of her robe and tied it about Nirvan's head like a blindfold. She knew that Nirvan would prefer a dignified appearance as well.

The sun burnt at her neck. Midday. Most importantly, Marel knew, she must find shade to provide a few hours of relief. Running her eyes critically across the mountainside before her, she spotted what looked like an unused burrow near a tree. She found that it was indeed vacant, and expanded the opening as much as she could with her bare hands. To her delight, the burrow seemed just spacious enough for two. She carried Nirvan there and tucked him into it as delicately as she could. She squeezed in next to him, the top of her head barely peeping out of the hole, and drifted off easily.

_

* * *

Cloudy afternoon in summer, the year Fiela broke her second engagement. They were dancing through thick wild grass in an endless open field, Marel and Nirvan, fenced in by one fragile-looking string of barbed wire, barely reaching a foot off the ground. Marel understood that they were upon the Duke's estate. "What happened to your eye?" Marel asked with perfect common tongue. Nirvan still had both even though his left was gouged out seven years ago. She had touched the bloody bandages herself yesterday._

"_I tricked them," he said with a mischievous smile. Both glinted as healthy and gray as the water-swollen sky. _

"_We should leave before they notice," Marel whispered to him in urgent tones. "It won't be long before they find Fiela. We should already be halfway to Gallia by now." They paced to the fence and looked down upon it with reverence. "I've heard it said that the fence took the eyes of those who crossed it."_

"_How?" Nirvan said as they peered down at it._

"_Don't you see how sharp it is?" Marel shook her head and urged Nirvan away from it. "Don't lose your eyes now."_

_Nirvan spread his magnificent wings behind him. "The fence is no danger to us." He held her by the waist as he stirred up dust and launched into the sky like a giant mythical creature. Marel marveled at the landscape below – a vast prairie – a mountain range to the north, where she could see laguz dot the sides amongst the trees – a great forest to the west, more lush than any wood._

_At last, they landed on a cloud. Marel understood this to be the land beyond the fence. "We are free here?" she asked._

"_Of course we are free," Nirvan assured her. "They are far behind us now."_

_She looked behind them, toward the barbed wire fence of the estate, and was surprised to see Nirvan suddenly in the distance, coming toward her up a high stairway reaching into the clouds. His wings were bound, and a red blindfold covered his eyes. Death clung to him in the form of his ragged appearance, sunken cheeks, and odor unique to those who approach the gates. He reached the cloud and bowed to her. _Good bye. I love you_, he said in sounds so faint Marel could only catch his meaning. No matter. The meaning was always the important part._

_Above them, the gray sky broke into a hot sun. As the heat beat down upon their heads, a shower drizzled from the vanishing clouds. Marel took Nirvan's withered hands and danced with him in the rain._

* * *

Marel woke to the sensation of her hair and ears burning, and a lingering stench of... something. The sun had descended, throwing slanted orange light into the burrow. As she stretched and prepared to crawl out, dry pain burning down her nose and throat made itself apparent to her as well. Grimacing at the clear sky, she dragged herself out from the ground and shook off a layer of dirt.

Reaching back into the burrow, Marel laid a hand beneath Nirvan's arm. She stared at her hand, his arm. Something was wrong. She pulled Nirvan out from the burrow as delicately as she could. Checking his heartbeat and breathing, both present but more faint and tortured than ever, Marel came to realize what teased her nose. She smelled death about him.

Laying him as comfortably as she could, she sat and waited, watching the barest movement of his chest continue, as slight as if moved by the wind. Flies began to take interest in him, and she shooed them all away, growling, _He's not dead yet_, as if flies could make a difference. Through the hours of early dusk, Marel sat at Nirvan's side.

As strained minutes passed into hours, she wondered to herself if she should help him along. At times she pondered whether it was worse for Nirvan to draw in the next faltering breath, or cease and be silent forever. Once or twice she held her hand over his chest, ran it up to the softness of his neck, and considered pressing down on that tender neck until he fell into sleep. Each time she couldn't, instead drawing her hand gingerly to the swelling claws of flesh extending from beyond the blindfold, as if they would burst with vile fluid beneath her fingers.

In time, its length unknowable, all was eerily still. Marel found the chest still, soundless, cool. With detachment, she laid him into the burrow and caved it in with dirt. This was the best grave she could manage in her weakness. As she sat numbly watching the collapsed burrow, she buried him in her heart a second time.

By the time the moon shone brightly through the inky night, Marel had managed to tear herself away from the grave and trudged on alone. Often, she glanced back to the estate, thirst tearing at her. Nirvan was gone. There would be no one to execute if she went back...

Unthinkable. Not for water. Not for anything.

That plan stowed away from the weeks before suddenly became real again. For Nirvan, she whispered, _May death be as gentle as a warm summer rain. _Throughout the lonely day, she absently folded her hands behind her as if still supporting his weight as she kept an eye out for caves, tree settlements, anything. She found nothing.

* * *

By early twilight, she had circled her way to the opposite side of the mountain. She cast a look at the land from atop the mountain with a sense of unreasonable foreboding. Largely cracked and dry, a lake due north, a large mountain range in the distance to the northwest, and another closer due west. Something was wrong. Her head throbbed as she tried to reason what that was.

Mountains.

There were too many mountains. Why?

She lowered herself into the ground and tried to focus her scattered thoughts. Mountains. So many mountains. North.

_What if these are the wrong mountains?_

Her eyes darted back and forth. The lake. Wasn't that Lake Semper? She had only walked for a day and a night when she came upon these mountains. And if Lake Semper were still to her north, then...

She turned her exhausted eyes to the distant mountains, still far to the north. _I could make it_, she thought to herself. _I could make it with some water..._. She swept her gaze to the lake, its shallowness apparent even from her distance. Still, water parties attacked its center like a knot of busy ants. She would have to weave down the mountain and head for the lake, unseen by the overseers there. Then she would head for the border mountains.

With this plan in mind, she lifted her heavy body from the ground. She staggered as she glanced down the mountainside. One step at a time. She thought of herself _approaching Lake Semper, the Duke's party of beasts of burden, filling her barrel from its depths for the trip, drinking water until her stomach swashed. She wiped her mouth on her bare, dry arm, deeply content_ she saw the ground headed for her and quickly cushioned herself with both hands. She shook her head and climbed back to her feet, brushing bits of stone from her palms. Marel reflected on the smears of blood that covered her callouses when a drop joined them. She noticed blood running from her nose and lapped it away; the bleeding quickly stopped.

Chastising herself for slipping into a daydream, she steeled her gaze to the mountain road before her _stretching endlessly into the horizon. Nirvan was heavy on her back but she knew she had to keep heading for the mountains. She pulled herself up another ledge to find a small group of laguz waiting for her, smiling, offering to take Nirvan to their healers. They presented a waterskin to her and said teasingly, "One small drink, lioness." She clutched the waterskin and _Marel steadied herself against the mountain wall and shook her head. The mountain incline before her was no cliff, but still angled away dangerously. She couldn't risk slipping down it. She spotted a nearby tree and headed for its weak shade, as it would be enough _for now, she thought as she reclined against it and closed her eyes. When the sun rose and pricked her neck she couldn't care less_ fell outright against the ground. With a final burst of will, she picked herself up and deposited herself in front of the tree. Finally, she let herself slip into sleep in a whirl of images.

_

* * *

A girl, as brightly colored as a butterfly, hovering just out of reach, saying, "I am sleeping," in a voice like humming. "You mustn't wake me. Not for a thousand years."_

_Marel found herself kneeling, begging, "You must feel our suffering. Is this your judgment upon the humans? You must give us rain."_

_The girl faced the setting sun with sadness. A chorus of ghastly cries met Marel's ears; she located the sound from the sun and also turned her head that way . "There's so much sorrow. But you mustn't wake us. Ashera would erase the world."_

"_The Goddess would never..."_

_She smiled teasingly at Marel and put a finger to her lips, drifting upward and away like a softly plumed seed. _

Awful pain. Horrifying screams. Waking from what felt like an ageless sleep, Marel flicked her ears and turned her head to the west, where the sun had already begun to descend. A distant plume of smoke rose in a wisp from the horizon. Marel sensed that something terrible had happened.

And why should she even bother to add that to her tally? Over the last few days, everything in the world had gone wrong. She ran a finger around the slave collar still around her neck. How long had it been since she had functioned in her day-to-day unchanging dreary duties, scrubbing walls and dusting vases? How long ago had she been in the life she knew and passively hated? How long ago had she been crouched on the floor with Nirvan, chatting with only a beam of sunlight in the way? How long ago did she feel assured that her life would continue until she was old, so long as she behaved? She turned her eyes blankly away from the smoke to Lake Semper. With her head feeling both heavy and light, she tested a leathery lip with a tongue too big for her mouth and forced herself down the mountain, immune to the sound of agony echoing from the west. As far as Marel was concerned, the world was all coming to the end. The only thing she could do was keep herself afloat. She needed water. That was paramount. She needed water to stay alive. The world _would_ give her water from the force of her need. There could be no world unless it gave her water.

She stumbled down the mountain path, her legs seeming to have ideas of their own. On one step her left knee buckled, and she tumbled a short distance until a tree slammed into her shoulders, breaking her momentum. An alarming sense of foreign control pricked at her as she tried to raise herself again. Though she bade her tail to keep balance, it seemed as if she no longer knew what balance was. The sunlit world pulsed dimly in her eyes. Soon after Marel brought herself upright, her own leg threw itself backwards and she tumbled some distance – she could no longer tell, but it seemed short – until she stopped. She watched the clear sky's light through the dead trees arrange themselves in patterns _like the dove tessellation on the kitchen walls, then repeating diamonds like the card room, then like spattered blood stains on Nirvan's tunic._ Perhaps she was too tired. She let her gaze soften and let loose her mind from thoughts of rising. She would feel better after she gave in. _She would only rest for a few hours, she promised herself._

_Marel watched the lights above with half-lidded eyes like the light displays in Sienne during festivals that sometimes were grand enough to be seen all the way from the Duke's estate. She was standing in the courtyard, on a barrel between two buildings, enjoying the best view possible for her half minute before it was time for another slave to have his turn. She stepped down from the barrel, and then she was creeping with Nirvan down into the dungeons, to see what had become of a close roommate. The dungeon halls were confusing and guards blocked every other corridor. They were lost in its dark halls and found nothing but cold-eyed prisoners and stinking remains until they turned back to the entrance again. Then she was under the lash, biting her lip for Nirvan's sake, because her existence had been bargained for, and she had no right to throw it away. Nirvan appeared now, taking the overseer aside while she laid in pain on the ground. He was murmuring something in modern tongue that she couldn't understand. It was the same language of the men who kept her in the crate with three others. One was her sister, Asya, who died in the trip from lack of air while Marel was too light-headed to mourn. She could remember running with Asya to the southern end of their village to see why the adults had gathered there. In the distance a knot of beorc was steadily approaching. Then they were a hunting party of proud laguz, bringing home the prize of a strong deer. Marel ran out to greet them with her arms full of spices, dropping a few stalks of coriander as she waved to her father. She bent down to pick them back up and she was crawling to her mother in a frightening storm. Her mother let Marel worm into the blankets with her. Her siblings, in jealousy, went to their mother's side as well, and with sleepy and halfhearted complaints she let them all by her side._

What happens next?_ Marel asked her mother, and asked herself._

_Suddenly all her family and warmth was torn away, and she stood on the mountain summit looking over the Duke's estate. She felt her body paralyzed, her skin slack as if melting away, bones inert as if welded together. High above in the sky, heavy clouds drifted above the estate and released their burden in a terrifying flash of water. She watched as the current surged toward the estate, crashing against its walls and towers, dashing it to pieces and sweeping the rubble away in the current, like nature's wrath come anew. The clouds came to her, and she watched them fearfully, wanting the comfort of her mother._

_For her, they released a soft summer's drizzle. Within seconds, she was bathed completely in coolness, but still she could not will her limbs to move, or her mouth to open and take in water. The butterfly girl hovered distantly in the sky, brusquely moving the clouds, with eyes unseeing of the parched land or Marel, who stood there soaked with inattention._

_All too little, too late, Marel thought to herself, before letting herself fall asleep to the hum of rain._


End file.
